


Be Your Own Cryptid

by BugTongue



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Psychological Horror, Suicidal Thoughts, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 20:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8938543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BugTongue/pseuds/BugTongue
Summary: Seven-step program to becoming your own cryptid, ft. Drs. Gottlieb and Geiszler.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Be Your Own Cryptid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14557212) by [octopus_hatred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopus_hatred/pseuds/octopus_hatred)



> Not the first time I've read something and posted it BUT this is the first time I've attempted something like a radio recording. It's a latent obsession.  
> (Note: now it is working)

 

The locals say there’s monsters taking the form of humans these days, now that they can’t get away with being big as skyscrapers, big as death. They say there’s two men down by the shore who pick up the trash and debris and scream into the water because they get stuck like that, stuck on the shore. stuck in their heads. When you see them in town they don’t look back, or they do, but they aren’t looking at you. Its unnerving.

They're war heroes, says one person. Madmen says another. Monsters says a little kid who watched the scruffy one pick at the fish on the dock like he was looking for something specific.

Be your own cryptid. Step one: become obsolete. Step two: wait.

Step three: scare the locals by being crazy, by being sad, by daring to go buy eggs and soy milk and honey and potatoes from the store in town. Frighten the locals by teaching arithmetic to their grade schoolers. Terrify them by picking the broken glass out of the sand that the young punks put there, while they watch, while they argue with you about favorite bands.

Step four: Stay away from the locals because now that the world isn’t ending nightmares only happen at home in bed, on the couch, on the floor.

The two of you are a system, you function together. You function separately but poorly, like someone missing half their limbs and unused to the new formation. Your personalities fit like nesting dolls inside your combined and separate psyche and you don’t tell any of the locals just what you did in that war.

Step five: try to kill yourself ten times a week by drowning in the bay and when people ask you how you’re feeling, when you trudge back onto dry land, start talking about particle accelerators. Tell the teenagers that this is what happens to bad little kids who do too many drugs and tell the older ones this is what happens to Prometheus. Except wax wings were a vulcan mind trick and the sun was knowledge.

Maybe you’re getting confused, maybe you’re mixing your jedi and your starfleet personnel. Maybe you’re out of your mind and half of half of that mind is made up entirely of pop culture references.

Step six: forget your name and your other name and snarl at a student who came back during lunch to get the money they forgot in their backpack. Nearly lose your job on multiple occasions.

Step seven: Throw it all out the window because you were already a monster of the dark, the creature under your bed, from day fucking one. You are worrisome all on your own without being two men and a baby kaiju. Add in the rest and you just get there more swiftly, more viscerally.

Don’t sleep. That’s not a step just don’t sleep don’t sleep don’t sleep  _ you cannot sleep while enemies are nearby _ . The only enemy is the one in the mirror and the one in bed with you and the ones that you can feel scratching at the doggy door sewn shut blown shut silent at the bottom of the sea.

It’s the wrong sea, here, it yells a little quieter and burns a little less but you still watch invisible sea monsters surface and break free of the spray and gobble you up. You see this repeatedly until the punk kids from town dump sand in your hair and asks which old person band you have on your shirt now, with the dizzy smiley face and burn holes in the sleeves.

There is no step eight, everyone knows if you don’t get there with a seven-step program it’s fake.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any feedback on how it sounds and whether you'd like me to do more of this, I'd be grateful to receive it.


End file.
